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Wales Online
Wales Online
National
Philip Dewey

Wally the walrus is heading south and has has been spotted in Spain

A walrus that spent weeks in Tenby has now been spotted in Spain.

Wally the walrus became a popular figure after turning up on the Pembrokeshire coast at the end of March.

He would frequently be seen hanging round the RNLI lifeboat station and would entertain observers.

After leaving Tenby, he was spotted in Cornwall on May 20 off the coast of Padstow but has since kept on moving and was seen in France where he was first spotted at Sables d'Olonne and then on May 28 at La Rochelle, where he wedged himself into a boat for a nap.

Wally the Walrus in La Rochelle, France (Brigade Nautique de La Rochelle)

And now he has travelled even further south after being spotted in Spain in the Basque Country.

Writing on Facebook on Saturday, Verballenas.com said: "The Walrus that appeared in La Rochelle last week is already in the Basque Country... the Bilbao superport tugboats located (him) swimming in the mouth of the Nervion in apparent good health."

They posted a clip of Wally on their Facebook page and told people not to approach Wally and that anyone who is seen mistreating the Arctic walrus would be reported.

A native of Arctic waters, either from the east coast of Greenland or from Svalbard, Wally is very far from his natural habitat. It had been hoped that as the water temperatures increase, he'd make his way back up north to cold water and closer to home, but he seems to be doing the opposite.

Quite why the walrus ended up so far south remains a mystery. While some suggest the animal could have floated on ice, others say the animal could simply have been searching for food, or become disturbed, for example by noise, and sent off course.

He was first spotted on Valentia Island off the Kerry coast of Ireland a week before he arrived in Wales.

By March 21, Wally had made the 450km journey to Pembrokeshire, before heading to Padstow in Cornwall and later Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, halfway between Brest and Bordeaux on the Bay of Biscay, then nearby La Rochelle before ending up on the north coast of Spain.

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